The Kitchen Front

by Jennifer Ryan

  A cheer went up, and Audrey did her best to stop bursting into tears.

  But with pies needed for the morning, there was little time for celebrating, and soon enough they all got back to work: Gwendoline and Zelda at the sink washing pots, Nell and Audrey making pastry cases.

  After a few minutes, Zelda slid down into a chair, her damp dishcloth slipping to the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Audrey said.

  “It’s nothing. I just feel a little tired, that’s all,” she said. “Too much food,” she added, trying to smile. But her hand clutched the side of the table.

  Audrey exchanged glances with Gwendoline. “Maybe the baby’s coming.”

  Everyone stopped what they were doing, looking at Zelda, but she promptly quelled it. “It’s fine.” She scooped up the dishcloth. “The baby’s not due for a few weeks. In any case, I feel better now.”

  They drifted back to work, except for Audrey, who watched her quizzically. “That might have been a contraction.”

  “It was just a little thing, indigestion probably.” Zelda stood up, going back to drying pans.

  But after a few minutes, Nell suddenly looked up from the sink. “I think we need to watch Zelda. She looks like she’s about to—”

  At that moment, Zelda staggered back to the chair, Gwendoline pulling her soapy hands out of the sink to grab her under the arms.

  “I don’t feel well at all,” Zelda murmured, her face contorting with pain.

  “I knew they were contractions.” Audrey glanced at the kitchen clock. “That was about five minutes, so we still have a while to go. Zelda, we need to get you upstairs as soon as this contraction has stopped.” She glanced up. “Gwendoline, call the midwife.”

  Together they helped Zelda up the stairs, and on Audrey’s directions, laid her down in Audrey’s room. “It’s the biggest and the best bed we have,” she said.

  Gwendoline put her head around the door, beckoning Audrey and Nell outside. They went out onto the landing, carefully closing the door.

  “The village midwife is attending another birth. She’ll come as soon as she’s free, but it might be a while.”

  “She can’t have the baby with only us to help her.” Nell had gone pale.

  “Aude, you’ve had babies before.” Gwendoline tried to remain calm. “Don’t you know what to do?”

  Audrey frowned. “But it was so long ago. Honestly, it’s a whole different experience when you’re on the other end. I hardly remember a thing.” She let out an anxious sigh. “Let’s just hope there aren’t any complications, although there often are.”

  A loud moan came from the bedroom. Audrey and Nell hurried back in, Gwendoline returning to the telephone. Zelda was writhing on the bed in agony, the contraction lasting a few minutes.

  Panic surged up inside Nell. “Is it supposed to be like this?”

  “I don’t know.” Audrey’s voice was rising in fear. “That’s just the point. It’s too difficult to tell, and we have no training. Things don’t always go as planned. We could be playing with someone’s life here.” She took a big breath. “Two people’s lives.”

  “I don’t think we have any other options,” Nell said. “We’re the only ones she has.”

  Zelda’s contractions were coming closer together and more powerfully—and noisier. Nell had to shush the boys and force them back to bed, telling them that they were to get extra treats in the morning if they stayed inside their bedrooms.

  Over the evening and into the night, the bedroom became progressively more disheveled, bedding everywhere, pillows dotted around, piles of damp or dirty towels, and some clean and folded, ready for use.

  Zelda’s forehead was drenched with sweat. She was seething in agony. “There’s something wrong. It hurts so much.”

  But all Audrey could do was smooth her forehead. “I’m afraid that’s how it is.”

  “Why do women do this? Didn’t you go through it three times?”

  “You’ll forget about it once it’s over. Trust me, it’s worth every ounce of pain.” Then she remembered that Zelda planned to give the child up, and blood rushed to her face. She looked over at Nell. “I think we’re nearly there now.”

  Nell had witnessed a birth only once before, when she was ten. A girl in the orphanage, only thirteen, had somehow become pregnant. No one knew how. The women who ran the orphanage called it “God’s baby,” but Nell somehow sensed that a man had been involved. The girl cried a lot, which also indicated that perhaps she hadn’t had a lot of say in the matter. After the birth, she was sent to work in a big house, just like Nell. The baby stayed in the orphanage. Nell couldn’t help wondering if that was how she had been born. Was she one of “God’s babies”? There were other, less fancy names for that kind of child. She knew them well.

  “I think we’re nearly there,” Audrey said, gripping a towel.

  “I feel it! It’s coming!” Zelda gasped.

  Nell felt her head swim a little as she watched the head easing out, Audrey’s hands guiding it. “Now, with the next contraction, push as hard as you can,” she said, and as Zelda began to howl once again, Audrey slid the baby out onto the bed, covered with blood, but squalling with life as soon as she could.

  “It’s a little girl,” Audrey said.

  Here, right in front of Nell, was an incredible new life, stretched out, arms and legs already fighting. “She’s beautiful, Zelda. Absolutely beautiful.” What a miracle, that this tiny being could be formed inside her friend, released so perfectly into the world. Nell couldn’t help a little laugh of joy. “She’s just like you.”

  Audrey cut the thick umbilical cord and gathered her in a towel. “I always said she’d be a girl.” She quickly wiped off the blood and passed her over to Zelda. “Look! You have a daughter, a baby girl!”

  Zelda moaned, putting up her hand. “I don’t want to see her.”

  “D-don’t you even want to look at her?” Nell took the baby over, feeling the weight and warmth of the bundle. “What about milk? Won’t she need feeding soon?”

  But Zelda turned brusquely, pushing the bundle away. “You and Audrey can feed her until the woman from the adoption agency comes to collect her. Audrey has some bottles, and there’s some National Dried Milk in the kitchen.”

  A flicker of unease went through Nell. She knew how it felt to be pushed away. Her arms unconsciously clenched the baby in close, as if to muffle the pain of rejection for the poor little thing. And as she stood watching Zelda’s poignant denial of her baby, Nell felt time stand still. Everything she had ever felt as an unwanted orphan flooded back to her. All her shame, all her fear, all her loneliness.

  But suddenly, the shrill sound of the doorbell interrupted her thoughts, then Gwendoline’s voice came as she showed someone in, footsteps trotting briskly up the stairs.

  “The midwife is here,” she said, while a tired-looking middle-aged woman with a large black medical bag pushed past her into the room.

  “Have I missed anything?”

  Audrey

  Audrey sat on the side of Zelda’s bed, the baby in her arms. The infant was a tiny little thing, all arms and legs flailing around. “She looks utterly determined to get out into the world, doesn’t she?” She glanced up at Zelda, who was lying on her side, her back to Audrey. “A bit like you.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind, you know.”

  The conversation had been put on hold all night—perhaps longer even, ever since Zelda had first come clean about her plan to give the baby up for adoption. A quiet hope in the back of Audrey’s heart had been that on seeing her baby, Zelda would change her mind. Alexander had brought the old crib down from the attic, and the mum of one of Christopher’s friends had given them an old pram. But the crib sat in Zelda’s room, empty, while every night the baby still slept in Audrey’s room, nestling in a pulled-out drawer
beside her bed.

  “I don’t want her near me,” Zelda said, her voice callous and determined. “She has to go. I called the agency, and a woman is coming the day after tomorrow to pick her up. I have to get on with my life.”

  “But you can’t go to London, not now. With the new restaurant, you’ll be needed here, with us.” Audrey sighed with frustration. “And frankly we already have three children to look after, one more won’t make a lot of difference.” She rubbed Zelda’s shoulder. “It’ll be easy—you can have your life and keep her, too.”

  Zelda shrugged Audrey’s hand off her shoulder. “I don’t want to be an unmarried mother. I’ll be despised—or worse, pitied. And what about the child? Do you have any idea what names they’ll call her? She doesn’t deserve that.”

  “Times have changed,” Audrey said softly. “A lot of babies are born these days without a father—either they’ve been killed on the front or, like you, the father was never involved. People can’t tell why or how. No one’s going to ask questions. A lot of women call themselves Mrs. instead of Miss—Mrs. Quince never married, so I don’t see why you can’t call yourself Mrs. Dupont, too.” Audrey took a deep breath. “There’s a war going on, Zelda. Men are being killed, people on the streets here being bombed, losing their lives, their possessions, everything they have—” She broke off, furious tears coming to her eyes. “Only vile judgmental people are going to take issue, and you shouldn’t let the likes of them dictate your life.”

  “But my work, my job—I’m a chef, Audrey. I love to cook, to create new recipes, to experiment—break the barriers of what people expect and want. That is who I am, Audrey. I can’t let a baby take that away from me.”

  “She doesn’t have to.” Audrey had got up and began pacing the room, rocking the tiny infant as she settled down to sleep. “We can be your family. Together we can support one another. With four of us, there’ll always be someone to look after the children, and there’s Alexander, too, and the others when they’re older.”

  Zelda said stiffly, “Don’t you see, Audrey? Women have to choose. We are either mothers and wives, or we are workers. We can’t be both. It doesn’t work that way and never will.”

  A flash of her own life passed before Audrey’s eyes. First as a bride, bright-eyed optimism flowing out of her as she embraced a world of children and domesticity. Then came the grief, the debts, the need for money forcing her to eke out a living with her cooking business. As she remembered the last few years, the lonely exhaustion of looking after children, working, and cleaning, always cleaning: clothes, dishes, children, a whole house that was catastrophically falling apart.

  “You’re right. It’s too much,” she gasped. “It’s all too much for one person. But we—we are four very competent, energetic women. We can show them that women don’t have to choose. We can be mothers and workers. And here you have a golden opportunity. You can be a mother and the top head chef of a successful women-owned restaurant. They will have to take us seriously. We cannot be ignored. We will be just as good as men—better.”

  A sense of justice overtook Audrey. They could make it work—they were making it work.

  But then she looked down at Zelda’s back and realized that the strong, resilient woman’s shoulders jerked slightly with sobs.

  Audrey leaned forward, putting a soothing hand on her shoulder. “Why are you crying? Can’t you see how good this will be—good for all of us.”

  There was no response. She had retreated into a world of her own.

  “I know it’s always been a struggle for you, but—”

  Suddenly, Zelda flung around, shoving Audrey’s hand away from her. “You have no idea how much of a struggle my life has been. You come in here with your nice ideas, talking about a revolution in womanhood, how we can be a big happy family, but you don’t know anything about the working-class world. You don’t know how I’ve had to fight for every inch of space I take up in the world, from the moment my mother banished me to the dirtiest corner of the room we all shared, to the cupboard of a room I had when I first lived on my own.” Her face was red with tears and anger—a lifetime of rage built up inside.

  “But—” Audrey tried and failed to comfort her.

  “You have no idea what it is like to be punched down at every turn, to have to soldier on, pulling yourself up, learning how to fight back. Well, now I can fight. If this stupid war hadn’t come along, I would have been winning—maybe even got a job as head chef. Then—and finally then—I would have some sense of victory. You speak of freedom. But you don’t know what that means to me—freedom to be the person that I am, to be free to fight for myself, to be free to make quick decisions to save my skin. Having a child is not a choice for me, can’t you see? I have to be on my own, working hard, without having to think about saving someone else, too. Now get out!”

  Her eyes glared, red and intense, into Audrey’s. Never had Audrey seen her so unmasked, so real. Never had she known the true power and force within her.

  “You underestimate yourself, Zelda,” she said, getting up and slowly going to the door. “You have just shown me all the strength and resilience you need to do this. You don’t have to deny yourself the one thing in life you need the very most—a family. Not only with us, but with this little girl. She is yours, your very own family. She will grow, and you will love her more than you have ever loved anything—more than you love yourself. You will feel part of something larger than yourself, something heavenly and magnificent.”

  “A baby doesn’t fix broken lives, Audrey. It only gets in the way,” Zelda snarled. “Leave me alone.”

  Audrey opened the door to leave, the little baby sleeping in her arms. A sense of dread overwhelmed her. There was nothing that she could say or do. Zelda, her face still wet with tears—tears of a life spent running, fighting—was going to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her fear.

  Suddenly angry, Audrey said, “You’re a coward, Zelda. You can’t see that you have strength enough for two of you. You’re more than this. More than you ever imagined.”

  And with that, she left the room.

  Zelda

  The doorbell rang downstairs, and Zelda felt the blood run fast through her veins. She tried to breathe. She tried to think about something else.

  Anything but the baby.

  It was the woman from the adoption agency. She recognized her voice from the telephone call. Shrinking down in the bed, she was beginning to feel her body recover from the birth, which was at least one good thing.

  There was little else to be pleased about.

  It seemed to her that when you make a decision about what is best for you, people can be unwilling to accept it. Since the birth, she had hidden in bed, trying to escape. Yet one by one, they had trudged in, sat, talked, and then, eventually, left.

  She didn’t want to see the baby.

  She didn’t want to hold the baby.

  The baby wasn’t hers—well, it wouldn’t be for long—so what was the point?

  The sooner the woman came and took the baby away, the better.

  She heard someone open the front door. It was Nell, she could tell by her voice. Then came the woman’s voice, deep and forthright, as if she were older, more practical. Then came the sound of footsteps as Nell showed the woman into the drawing room to wait and asking if she’d like a cup of tea, and then Nell hurrying into the kitchen.

  Words must have been exchanged in the kitchen, as the next thing Zelda heard was someone walking through the corridor downstairs, Gwendoline greeting the woman in the drawing room, talking about the war, the rations ruining Christmas again.

  Anything but the baby.

  But then, a new set of footsteps came from the kitchen. Lightly dashing, they came up the stairs, and before she knew it, the door was being opened as Nell hurried in.

  “I told you to give her the baby,” Zelda
said. “She doesn’t need to see me.”

  Nell was flustered, rushing around the bed so that she could see Zelda’s face.

  She was holding the baby.

  “You have to take the baby, quickly. Sit up, sit up! Take her.” She was nervous, panicked almost.

  Zelda turned around to her. “Why, what is it?”

  “I need to fetch Audrey. She’s making a pie delivery.”

  Nell was holding the baby out for her to hold, but Zelda simply couldn’t bear to take the little thing. She looked so tiny, so fragile. She had tried not to even look at the baby after she was born, but now, the sight of her made her curious, concerned for her.

  “What happened?”

  Nell was as white as a sheet. “It’s the woman from the agency, Gwendoline knows her from the WVS. She says she can’t be trusted.” Nell was urgently holding the baby forward for her to take. “There aren’t enough homes for unwanted babies. Everyone’s so busy with evacuees and unwanted pregnancies, they go straight to orphanages.” Her eyes pierced into Zelda’s. “And I know what those places are like.”

  “But—”

  “Just take the baby and I’ll get Audrey.”

  With that, she thrust the baby at Zelda, who had no choice but to take her, and then she darted out of the door.

  There are moments in life when time stands still. There is no anticipation, no denouement, only the here and now.

  And for the heart-stopping minute when she held her baby in her arms, Zelda saw her life—her angry, tough, relentless struggle—and wondered what it was all for. What was the point of it all?

  The agitation had woken the baby, and now she sleepily opened her eyes, her little face dainty and disarming.